


In Which The Shire Entertains a Passing Traveler

by orphan_account



Category: Discworld - Pratchett, Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Canon, over 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-23
Updated: 2008-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:58:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twoflower wanders through L-Space into the library of the Great Smials.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which The Shire Entertains a Passing Traveler

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for No True Pair and the prompt "Twoflower and Rosie: it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."   
> Since for this challenge I had these kinds of crossovers where the characters come from completely different worlds, I decided to have two kinds of crossovers: 1. genuine crossovers, where one character is plopped into the world of the other, 2. the kind where one character, more or less the same, has always lived in the other character's world. This is of the first type.

Mistress Rose Gamgee found the young man at the back of the library of the Great Smials, sleeping against a stack of books. He was wearing bright, slight clothes, but they were worn and dirty, and he was much too thin for all his great size as one of the Big Folk. Rosie couldn't for the life of her think of what he could be doing holed up between West-Farthing Botany and Tookish Geneologies. She was about to run back and tell someone, when the instinct of a mother three times over (and another bun in the oven) took over. She approached the man and shook him as roughly as she could by a bony shoulder.

'Wh-wz?' said the man, and opened his eyes behind his round glasses. They widened in surprise, and Rosie took a cautious step back, her hand groping for a heavy volume of Our Bolger Relations and Their Achievements. But the man merely sat up and gibbered at her in a strange language. He seemed delighted to see her.

'Well, come then,' said Rosie, 'you look fit to starve.' She took the man by hand like a little boy, and led him down the corridor up towards the reading hall.

'Rosie, did you find the what is that?' Pervinca Took gasped and stared.

'I found him,' said Rosie, 'between Botany and Genealogies. I don't think he understands the Common Tongue. No, wait...'

Pervinca had already grabbed a decorative Elven sword from the wall and was shouting into the corridor for reinforcements. The Battle of Bywater was not yet forgotten and now looked likely to be fought again right here in the library. Rosie looked up at the man anxiously, but he seemed quite oblivious, staring instead in open-mouthed delight at the walls, the round windows, at what must to him seem like miniature furniture. His eyes alighted on the modest tea set by the fire (just a couple of plates of sliced cold chicken breast, a helping of fruits and vegetables, some fresh buns from the kitchens, pitchers of milk and cream and wine, coffee and tea both, cheese and crackers and some pastries, a dozen or so boiled eggs and a helping of various sweets). Rosie recognized that look, and wasn't surprised when the man silently made for the food and drink. She turned instead to Pervinca.

'I really don't think he means ill.'

'You were there, though, all that bad year,' said Pervinca. Two more hobbits had appeared at the doorway and were gasping at the sight of the man digging into the buns.

'And don't you think I didn't suffer same as you, Miss Vinca! But does he look like a Ruffian to you?' They turned to the man, who beamed at them through his glasses, mouth full of pastry and chicken breast.

'I'd rather have him clapped in irons anyway,' said Pervinca suspiciously. 'Just until we know for sure.'

'And do you really think your brother Pippin would approve, or my Sam, or Master Merry? Haven't you been listening to their stories at all? Men have been watching over the Shire long before they ever invaded it - and they were bad men, half-men mostly that made up our ruffians. If he was a hobbit boy, why, it looks like you could have trashed him with one hand tied behind your dainty back before you were ever a tween, Miss Vinca. He's hungry and he's lost, and here you are all ready to play ruffian on him!'

There weren't many hobbits that could stand up to Mistress Rose when she put her tongue to work, and Pervinca put down her sword humbly before Rosie'd got half-way through. The other two hobbits shuffled their feet uncomfortably. There was no choice, then, but to deal with this new big problem, and they were more than happy to leave him to Rosie.

-

'Nose,' said Rosie, indicating her nose.

'Ah! ,' said Twoflower, beaming. 'Nose.' His name had been established as Two-daisies for a while, because he had indicated two daisies growing close to each other when an enquiry regarding his name was first pantomimed to him. Nobody had felt this was quite a proper name for a male, though, so Rosie had pried further until he had indicated a wild rose and a dandelion. In the end, Twoflower wasn't much better as a name, but it would have to do.

'Mouth,' said Rosie.

',' said Twoflower. 'Mouth, .'

'Let me teach him, Mama,' cried little Elanor.

'All right, then,' said Rosie, and gave up her seat by Bag End's front door with a grunt. The little one in her womb was turning out to be a big one, and standing up after sitting down was getting harder. 'But no cusswords, mind, or I will find out.'

With a squeal of delight, Elanor seated herself and pointed at the window. 'Door!'

'Door, ,' said Twoflower happily.

'Ellie!'

-

Rosie surprised everyone by having her baby easy as a dream, the whole record weight of him. 'I'd been so sure he'd be a terror to birth, I loosened up out of pure fear,' she joked to her husband, who wavered between compassion and mortal male terror at the very idea. He stuck to massaging her back and taking his turns cooking and looking after the children to give her a break, letting the eager young council secretary shoulder the brunt of the new Bywater well plans for a few weeks.

Big as the baby was, Twoflower could hold him in the palm of his two hands. He'd rock the baby sometimes, or croon to it in his strange language with its lilting melodies. He was getting to be known as the "Gamgees' giant", and seemed to be a must-see for all visiting relatives, whether they were actually invited to Bag End or not.

'I expect he will have to go home, eventually,' said Rosie to Sam in bed one night, soon after little Merry had started teething.

'He doesn't eat more than a hobbit, and he's been a help fixing roofs,' said Sam diplomatically. Rosie knew, though, that Twoflower was her "giant" more than the rest of the family's, so she'd have to be the one to broach the subject.

As it was, it was Twoflower who first brought up the idea of moving on. 'This world, bigger than Shire,' he said (for he'd picked up a good deal of Common Tongue during the nine months since he'd been found at the Smials). 'I want see more of it. I am tourist, understand.' He had used that word before to describe his occupation, but all Rosie could gather was that it meant he was a traveller who wasn't actually going anywhere, and that made little enough sense.

'Twoflower, tell me again how you ended up in the library.' Every time Rosie asked this, she hoped it would make some more sense this time, that perhaps Twoflower had learned enough Common Tongue to explain it better, but the story never changed.

'In Ankh-Morpork, big city, different country, I go into magic library at big school for wizards. I get lost. Next week, I'm in strange city London, and old man send me back. But I lose way again, end up in castle, where it rain and the roof is made of stars at night. Women and men in pointy hats like wizards send me back again. I think I want to see more. I go a little further, but I walk long way. I am hungry and thirsty, very thirsty. I go to sleep and Mistress Rosie wakes me up. Now I think, this place has food, drink, and many things to see. I will stay and look around.'

'And now you want to see more than the Shire. We call that a wanderlust. Some people set off and never come back, or if they do, they're not quite the same anymore.'

'I not yet go back to my home. More to see. Always more to see.'

Rosie had to smile, though her brain hurt from trying to make sense of it all. People don't simply walk through endless libraries and end up in places in completely different parts of the world.

'Coming home is for when I have no more world to see.'

A few weeks later, they held a farewell celebration for Twoflower. All those whose curiousity had not yet been sufficiently satisfied showed up with their hungry friends, so the party field filled up with enough people to keep the Green Dragon, as official caterers, in business for a good long while. The morning saw the giant sleeping under the stage, drunk off his head on the Shire's finest, with a hobbit or two tugged under each arm.

It was a couple more days before he set off, slipping away about as quietly as a big man in the Shire could, with spring in his step and a hobbit tune on his lips. He left behind a number of paintings produced by his magic box, some fixed roofs and a number of stories, all of which would be repeated, and few believed. Rosie always liked to think that he would find another magical library and his way back home again as soon as the wanderlust madness left him, and he could feel what she felt when she watched her family warming up by the fire on winter nights: that there was no place, no world, no journey's end like coming home.


End file.
